Foucault News

Navid Pourmokhtari, Toward a Paradigm Shift in International Relations Studies. (Re)Claiming World Peace, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024

About this book
This book argues that not only has the present international relations (IR) paradigm failed to preserve global peace in our time, it has also proved to be an obstacle in this regard, and for this reason a paradigm shift is urgently required. With a view to demonstrating the IR paradigm’s failure to secure global peace, moreover, a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis is used here to flesh out an archaeology of what I call knowledge relations within IR studies.

This analysis reveals that within IR’s paradigmatic corridors of knowledge the theoretical/analytical category of war has been privileged, i.e., elevated to the level of chief subject and object of analysis vis-à-vis peace. In order to show how this is the case, moreover, this book examines the paradigm’s mainstream debates, e.g., those on human nature, power, and the state of nature, and by implication state sovereignty and nationalism, in addition to its authoritative subfields, in particular peace studies, international relations theory, global governance, and security studies. Each of these works reproduces, indeed glorifies, war to the exclusion of a lasting global peace, and in large part by promoting certain knowledges that are racial, colonial, gendered, and consequently bellicose.

All this connotes that the IR paradigm is grounded in a regime of knowledge that tells us everything about the dynamics of war and nothing substantive about realizing peace—hence the pressing need for a paradigm shift. Put differently, under the auspices of IR studies, contemplating peace is fruitless, a mere scholarly mirage, and precisely because achieving it under this paradigmatic status quo is not, and will never be, a condition of possibility. If anything, this book demonstrates that we have not even begun to speak truth to knowledge in the cause of global peace.

Simon Lemoine, Les voies étroites de l’émancipation. Pour une philosophie du cours des choses, Paris: Les éditions Hermann 2025

Also published in Canada by Presses de l’Université Laval

Cet ouvrage propose une cartographie inédite des rapports de pouvoir contemporains, ouvrant à de nouvelles voies d’émancipation. Un concept neuf est fondé, celui de cours des choses, qui désigne tout ce qui arrive aux individus, du déroulement routinier de la vie à ses événements les plus inattendus. La connaissance approfondie de ce cours des choses nous permet tout d’abord de remanier, pour l’optimiser, notre organisation quotidienne face à lui, en faisant un tri éclairé entre les sollicitations nombreuses qui nous aliènent. Elle nous apprend aussi à provoquer, à reconnaître et à saisir des instants décisifs (kairos) qui peuvent encore exister dans nos cours des choses contemporains, pourtant largement domestiqués. Enfin, elle contribue à développer un art de la rencontre, consistant à susciter et même produire des événements dans le cours des choses, afin de le faire dévier dans des directions libératrices anticipées.

Simon Lemoine (Auteur)

Simon Lemoine est philosophe, enseignant et docteur en philosophie de l’Université de Poitiers. Chercheur indépendant, il est l’auteur de cinq ouvrages : Responsabiliser pour dominer (PUL, 2024), Aux limites de la résistance (Éditions du Croquant, 2022), Découvrir Bourdieu (Éditions sociales, 2020), Micro-violences (CNRS éditions, 2017) et Le sujet dans les dispositifs de pouvoir (PUR, 2013). Ses recherches, engagées dans des voies ouvertes par les travaux de Michel Foucault et de Pierre Bourdieu, participent en profondeur au renouvellement des études sur le pouvoir et la subordination des sujets.

Jan-Peter Herbst and Jonas Menze, Gear Acquisition Syndrome. Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music, University of Huddersfield Press, 2021

Open access

“Gear Acquisition Syndrome, also known as GAS, is commonly understood as the musicians’ unrelenting urge to buy and own instruments and equipment as an anticipated catalyst of creative energy and bringer of happiness. For many musicians, it involves the unavoidable compulsion to spend money one does not have on gear perhaps not even needed. The urge is directed by the belief that acquiring another instrument will make one a better player. This book pioneers research into the complex phenomenon named GAS from a variety of disciplines, including popular music studies and music technology, cultural and leisure studies, consumption research, sociology, psychology and psychiatry. The newly created theoretical framework and empirical studies of online communities and offline music stores allow the study to consider musical, social and personal motives, which influence the way musicians think about and deal with equipment. As is shown, GAS encompasses a variety of practices and psychological processes. In an often life-long endeavour, upgrading the rig is accompanied by musical learning processes in popular music.”

[…] Arsel and Bean (2013), inspired by Foucault’s (1991) concept of ‘regime of practice’, consider ‘taste regimes’ central for the standardisation of practices that can take the form of expected equipment amongst musicians for specific purposes or different levels of professionalism. The authors define taste regimes as a ‘discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates the aesthetics of practice in a culture of consumption. A taste regime may be articulated by a singular, centralized authority such as an influential magazine or blog’ (Arsel & Bean 2013: 899f). […] (p.128)